Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

According to Long Yangjun, she only selected the few most in pain and resentful miners and taught them the “Serenity Arts” so that they could get rid of the incessant and unforgettable agony.

In order to teach the rather complicated techniques to the miners who were uneducated, she had to teach them by using the methods of telepathy and directly stamped the arts into their heads through the transmission of brainwaves.

It was only a minor experiment at the beginning, but she greatly underestimated the potentials of the hominoids below the ground. The Serenity Arts and the methods of telepathy were spread among the miners like a wildfire. They were disseminated from this tunnel to that tunnel, from one mine to ten mines, from the mines to the geothermal factories, and from the geothermal factories to the assembly lines on upper levels or even the financial districts even upper above.

“It was not until then that I realized the underground hominoids had so much anxiety and pain regardless of their class, and that they had such a high demand for the Serenity Arts.”

Long Yangjun chuckled, not thinking that it was a big deal. “I like killing and sabotaging best in my entire life, and I’ve barely done anything good, but the propagation of the Serenity Arts, which helped so many people to relieve their pain, is certainly one of them!”

“But when you ‘relieved’ their agony and anxiety, you erased their delight and happiness altogether!” Li Yao observed coldly.

“Li Yao, why do you still not understand? Just look around!”

Long Yangjun slightly raised her voice, and her eyes became aggressive. “For the people living in this place, the universe is a hell, their own people are fiends, and living is suffering! They hardly have any delight and happiness. The seething black venoms inside their heads are endless pain and unpacifiable anxiety. Do they have any joy and happiness to be erased?

“I never forced anybody to do anything. Even when I kindly helped the miners who risked being deranged, I told them the side effects of the Serenity Arts and the methods of telepathy in great details truthfully. I said that the tricks were like the leukotomy where parts of the brain tissues were removed, and that while they could help you reduce your pain, it was very likely that you would never taste the feelings of happiness again.

“Can you guess their reply?

“Those miners said that they had never tasted the feeling of happiness in their harrowing life. So, it didn’t matter at all!

“At first, I did not know the full features of the Serenity Arts. It was only part of the knowledge that I found from the fuzzy ancestral memories. How would I know that practicing the Serenity Arts would be like drug addiction? How would I know that they would want to be more tranquil after they were tranquilized, more comfortable after they were comforted, and further eliminate all the pain when their pain was slightly relieved?

“But drug addiction or not, if we get to the bottom of it, that was their own choice!

“I was told that the patients who were on the verge of death due to terminal diseases were allowed to inject certain high-intensity anesthetics or drugs to relieve their extreme pain, which is in the spirit of humanitarianism. Then, for the pathetic hominoids living in the underground worlds, are they not suffering mentally terminal diseases when they are about to destroy themselves in the outburst of devils? Is it not in the spirit of humanitarianism to provide the Serenity Arts for them?

“Let me make it more frank. Flies only lay eggs in the gutter. If the world is really peaceful and quiet, and everybody is enjoying their life happily, not a single person will be fooled no matter how I deceive them and beg them to practice the Serenity Arts! But the reality is that they are crying and begging me to relieve their pain for them no matter what the price is. After all, they already have absolutely nothing to lose!”

“You’re right. It is the world that is wrong!”

Li Yao stood straight and argued, not giving in at all, “It is exactly for that reason that we should change the world instead of changing the people who are exploited and enslaved by the world!”

“Do not say ‘we’ when it is only your personal opinion.”

Long Yangjun said casually, “Perhaps you are a benevolent great hero who swears to save all the people, but as for me… Even if I am not a bad guy, I am still just a selfish person who is only willing to do things that I am capable of when my own interests are not hurt.

“If I can help somebody by lending my hand, I wouldn’t mind doing so, but if you are asking me to challenge the entire world at the risk of my own life, hehe, I’m afraid that it will be too demanding and outrageous, isn’t it?

“Besides, the situation at that time was highly emergent, and the devils would break out at any moment. I did not have any choice at all. If I did not teach them the Serenity Arts, I would be watching them be mentally deranged and consumed by violent feelings and desires, degenerating into insane, mad people! That was the only cure in my pocket. If you were in my shoes, what could you have done?

“Li Yao, just give up your biases and think about it calmly. If I have not lied about anything up until so far, can you find anything wrong with what I did? Was it in violation of your chivalry? If your soul were in my shell, and you were faced with thousands of ‘half lunatics’ who were about to go on a rampage when you were entirely on your own, would you have made a better choice?”

His eyes bloodshot, Li Yao stared at Long Yangjun and thought hard for a long time. Then, he managed to say, “While you do have some points, I am still suspicious that you are not as kindhearted and innocent as you claim to be. You taught the miners the Serenity Arts probably because you wanted to test the power of the technique or to figure out its specific usages. After all, the knowledge retrieved from ‘ancestral memories’ can be fuzzy and disordered. It was necessary for you to test and sort it through! Don’t deny it. Although I do not have any proof, it was probably the fact based on my understanding about you!”

“Look, you are being cynical again, aren’t you?”

Long Yangjun said with a smile, “Even if that was what was on my mind, so what? Is the almighty Father Li going to punish someone for what they think? Is thinking in violation of any law?”

Li Yao coughed and said, “We’re off the topic. Let’s focus on Nepenthe. What is that about exactly?”

“Very simple. As more and more people learned the methods of telepathy and then practiced the Serenity Arts, they naturally formed a secret society.”

Long Yangjun opened her hands and raised them, as if she were surrendering, to show her innocence as she said, “That thing was truly not within my plan. The gathering of so many people would not do me any good! However, on second thought afterward, I realized that the birth of such an organization was a necessity because human beings could only be effectively motivated by certain instructions or when seeking the significance of their lives.”

Li Yao was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Literally what I said. Everybody is living for something, not just to eat and sleep.”

Long Yangjun said, “Human beings were manufactured by the Pangu Clan and Nuwa Clan as their tools in the beginning. Since they were tools, their users would naturally pack certain instructions into the heads of humans so that humans could do their work dutifully, right?

“After all the primeval civilizations perished and human beings survived, they began to be driven by their feelings and desires. The significance of their lives is the satisfaction of their feelings and desires. It is exactly because feelings and desires can never be satisfied that human beings have been moving forward incessantly.

“Do you understand it now? The orders from the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan and the orders from the desires in their heads are all the ‘significance of life’.

“But right now, the underground hominoids who practice the Serenity Arts have suppressed their feelings and desires to an extremely low level, resulting in the shortage of inner motives in their hearts. In the meantime, there is not a supreme being such as the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan, which gives them orders from the outside. Here comes the question. What exactly are they living for under such circumstances?”

“Right!”

Li Yao was greatly enlightened. “This is indeed a very serious problem. Human beings cannot lack beliefs. Even the most evil or cheesy beliefs are still the motives to push people forward. Those who have completely lost their beliefs are like spiritual puppets without given orders. They will not have any reason to do anything at all!”

“Therefore, since they have lost their beliefs of the past, they will naturally search for or create new beliefs as the significance of their lives.”

Long Yangjun said, “That might’ve been caused by my neglect, but I couldn’t have seen it coming, could I? Thankfully, they did not need my help to come up with a set of new ideas, which were the prototype of the doctrine of Nepenthe.

“The doctrine of Nepenthe holds that all the sufferings in the world are because of excessive desires, and all the mortals in the universe are tortured by the devils of desires. Even the high and mighty Immortal Cultivators are but slaves and puppets of the devils in their heads.

“It is exactly because they are haunted by the devils and they have lost their sanity since a long time ago that the Immortal Cultivators exploit the ordinary people brutally and the ordinary people abuse each other, turning the whole universe into a boundless hell of infinite darkness and horror.

“Therefore, there are no ‘Immortal Cultivators’ in the world at all but only the possessed people who pretend to be Immortal Cultivators. What rules over the Imperium of True Human Beings is exactly the devils!

“Even though all the planets in the three thousand Sectors are drained, it is impossible to meet the demand of the possessed people whose feelings of ravenousness are as deep as black holes. They are essentially the worms of the universe and will drag the three thousand Sectors into destruction.

“To protect the universe and recover the real tranquility, the first thing that is to be done is to annihilate the feelings and desires in one’s own head and to return to the original, pure state. Then, it is necessary to help other people who are tortured by emotions and extricate them from eternal pain and anxiety. In the end, everybody must be united and go to ‘purge’ the fake Immortal Cultivators living on the surface of the planet without fear.

“The universe will not embrace the ultimate salvation until the last Immortal Cultivator is purged and destroyed. Henceforth, human beings will live in peace with the universe carefreely forever without any wars among themselves!”